march 5, 2025

how much can change in a year

i’m constantly oscillating between one place and the other, between two shores that grow wider and wider, but somehow still defy all odds, somehow still stubbornly stay connected, by a single strip of sand. i am constantly oscillating between my higher self that is not a self but the quiet awareness and the smaller nonsense that still has some hold on me. the hold has weakened beyond what i thought or knew possible, but it seems my body still persists, or my ego, or my mind, or whatever i must label this stupid nonsense i still fall prey to. the words are still not flowing out of me as they should, and this time i tempted to blame the publicity of this stunt – i am writing on a plane and it feels awkwardly exposing, though it never did before. anxiety, somebody is watching me, maybe doechii is right, and labelling something i do not call the a-word, but probably falls into that bucket. anyway, this watching is almost certainly in my head, because no one can see this, and if they can, they cannot read it, as i have learnt the hard way. i kind of love that the people i encountered in japan had no interest in learning english in the way i have noticed elsewhere in the world. there was no sorry-ness that came with it, no sense of inferiority or desire to participate, at least from my brief judgment of it. i like that my love for language encounters its limits in those who cannot speak it, or better yet, those who cannot be bothered to (like i cannot be bothered to speak theirs). i love how poor translation technology still is. like when i was trying to translate that haiku on the stone (more on that later), or when i was trying to figure out what that snack label said and google could not decide whether it said protein or big bastard. i can sense my fascination with all this is connected to my newfound disdain for the west, or the obsession with it. i keep saying i am so done with the west, and i don’t know what i’m really trying to say. probably that i am recognising how the acceptance of the west as the norm, at least, or the obsession with the west as an ideal, at worst, comes with a necessary ignorance of how big the world actually is, and how un-west it actually is. i hate that i exist inside a western imagination, even so that even when i exist inside an eastern geography, i still exist inside a western imagination. less so in japan and more so in india, maybe, because why the fuck are a million people dying to see coldplay? stuff like that, you know. that people know who jennifer aniston is. it starts with language, it always does. and it is not undivorced from my spiritual forays, because the more i read about spirituality, the more i see i cannot really read about it at all. i cannot engage with zen buddhism because i must engage with alan watts’ translation of it (as brilliant as he is), because i must engage with DT suzuki’s interpretation of it (he was a nazi, apparently), because i must engage with some white guy’s attempt to explain it to the west, to people like me. i cannot understand this damn haiku, no matter how many hours i spend translating it. i cannot understand any of it all, without understanding the way of seeing and being and living life that is not accessible to me. it is language, at this stage, but it is also life, and philosophy, and fundamentals. like how i can’t explain india to people, i can’t explain the nature of interaction and being and breathing and loving and hating and all the verbs that probably don’t even possess a word in this script at all. ironically, some of this is the point of zen buddhism – the non-translatability of it all. the necessary limits of translating a spiritual experience – the razor’s edge – into a vessel for explanation, or description, or transmission. there are some things – maybe all things – you cannot explain, or describe, or transmit, and they are probably where life begins. it’s ironic, then, that i am still feeling so freed by writing about all this in this moment. it’s not even eloquent or smooth as it sometimes is, it is awkward and janky and not coming out as i want it to, and i am loving that too. i love this page so much, even if it exists at the edge of excavating experience and polishing it for the world to consume. not the world, really, because no one will see this, but the world, really, as in it now exists outside of me. things must exist outside me, i am realising, or admitting, through my aversion to it all. i became quite averse to all of this, to all of life and expression and existence itself, as i may or may not have documented here. it was when my interest in buddhism collided with or collapsed into nihilism, in classic western logic. what do you mean there is no meaning to any of this?

anyway, i started with two shores, and i still find myself swimming between them. not staying in place, but lapping back and forth, confused in my own dithering. (it’s hilarious that i have so much to say before i can get to what i wanted to say. and i havent even gushed over miro yet). the two shores are the spiritual path i am being guided towards – pushed, nudged, encouraged, loved – and the stupidity of life that i am still reminded of, and somewhat governed by. i really don’t understand why i must exist in the purview of others. i really dont understand why i must exist in the awareness of people who consider me their friend. i really dont understand why this resentment towards their ways of being and engaging and interacting with me feels like such an assault on my ability to breathe. i don’t even know if it is all of them or some of them or none of them (and just me). there are definitely a few loud violators, and they are the ones who operate least from love and most from some desperateness they exude out into the world, and onto their interactions with me. they hate themselves, and i relate to the feeling, but i hate that it leaks out of them and onto me, in the most subtle ways. like their need to describe me and shrink me and berate me, in tiny ways. their need to attach to me as a body and me as an idea and me as a representation of something in their little drama. i can tell who operates from love and who does not, and i can tell from a continent away. i don’t mind those who do, because they seem to bother me less. they love me from afar, and they allow me to be what they allow themselves to be, and it is not too assaulting of an interaction. but all of this is only part of the problem, too. the meta problem, of course, is that i am still bothered by all this, and it is still an island that has not yet drowned, but we’ll come back to that. the second mini-problem is that it is not only a question of love at all. even those who love me and love themselves and love all of life, i realise, irk me now. it felt like i was being shot in the chest when i spoke to my friend after two weeks off the grid and she was life-updating me about her job. there was nothing offensive or bullet-worthy of such news, and i was thrilled, of course, but i couldn’t deny the hole. i hate that, you know. i hate that. i hate that i can have the most transformative experiences of my life and the world seems to operate on the logic that they must be witnessed, for them to have taken place. i do not want to be fucking witnessed, but it seems like i must be. one of the other culprits said he had been thinking of me recently (i knew, because i had picked up on it ;)) and referenced the weather in london, when he asked how i was doing. of course he didn’t know i had been in japan for three weeks and i had left my body for three months and i had been crying on the beach in naoshima for three hours, and my life had changed. of course he did not know, like i did not know much of him. but it made me want to pull my hair out. and there were a few other instances like this – let’s catch up this weekend – no, i fucking can’t, because i no longer want to deal with you, because i no longer have the time, because i am sitting at the end of the earth where i always find myself feeling most at home. i felt at home in this random neighborhood in tokyo, and felt this awkwardly strong nostalgia when i was passing the coffeeshop for the last time. i felt a strange attachment to the guy, and saying goodbye, and it was not because i had developed some weird fondness and attraction to him, i swear. it is because my interaction with him symbolised a truth i had been searching for this whole time. he resembled a mirror to the life i wanted, the person i was, the life i was living, the person i am, and we barely interacted at all. i mean, we spoke about coffee for ages, and his friends taught me kandala, and he genuinely made the best coffee in tokyo, and most of it was stuck in translation. but i loved it in the right way. it was what i wanted in this life. to be known by no one except strangers who did not know me at all. the only occasional downside of living in complete silence for weeks on end is that i sometimes needed to check my voice still worked, and my body still possessed the brevity. that need, i was realising, could be filled by coffee shop man and those of the like. coffee shop man in tokyo is so different from coffee shop man in london, and that is hilarious, too. anyway, i am diagnosing myself as i read this, and i can’t tell if it is pointing to something deeper. i hate that so much of life has become about diagnosis – about needing to describe what is happening, especially if it is unusual or out of rhythm to society’s tested cadence, and how to change it. how to determine if it is OK, and how to then fix it back into OK-ness, by the most unsubstantiated, nonsensical logic.

i was watching diary of a ceo on the plane, not because i am intrigued by this modern hippy dippy lifehack dialogue, but because i am intrigued by other people’s intrigue of it. (on a similar vein, i was watching a japanese talk show on how to choose the right private secondary school, and that was even better). anyway, it put me to sleep, before showing me how debased everything has become. i liked how miro began ‘anti-painting’ when he saw where the art world was heading in its commercialisation, and i liked how he burnt his paintings, and knew destruction was creation, too. i want to destroy all this, i really do. he had it in him, the intricacy and skill and fauvism – he just chose to paint his dreams instead. i want to paint my dreams instead. i don’t want to participate in a world where diary of a ceo is providing meaning to people’s crumbling lives. i mean, it wasn’t even as bad as i thought, and the guy seemed somewhat self aware that he is obsessed with the material and rational and scientific and whatnot. but there is such a flagrant violation of depth all around us, and it is slowly making me sick. there is no depth and there is no complexity and there is no rigour and there is no honour and there is no integrity at all. you can just say whatever, and quote whatever, and reference this study and that study, and it is all fucking done for. i don’t believe anything they say, but not in a conspiracy theory sort of way, but in a way that i can sense it is violating all ethics of ideology and speech and science. everything is pseudo-something, and i can’t explain why. it has all been dumbed down to the lowest common denominator – which is probably some version of what entertains a tired mind – and it is all shrinking to the simplest, stupidest interpretation of itself. but it resonates, too. it is progress, too. it is better than so much else that is out there, and we are swimming in seas of poison. this is just a wave, or a ripple, but it is still a symbol. everything is pseudo-something, everything is life-hacking, everything is diagnosis, everything is reaching, everything is desire, everything is nonsense, everything sucks, everything is horror, including me. maybe i like escaping to the end of the earth not because it lacks nonsense, but because i lack awareness of it. i lack attachment to it, because i am not a member of the subsect of society that finds it palatable, or worthy of anything at all. i am not a member of the cult of fever that is this way of relating to the world, and relating to each other. i dislike all of it. not just the pseudo-science. but the pseudo-friendships, the pseudo-relationships, the pseudo-entertainment, the pseudo-psychology, the pseudo-progress, the pseudo-art, the pseudo-fucking-life. i have not found a way to exist in the society i exist in, without at least, hiding inside it. i find equally irksome the art ‘scenes’ that are meant to provide escape from this nonsense. the other day the girl was talking about the construction (or deconstruction?) of post colonial identity and the poetry of telenovelas in communist russia, in a non ironic way. everyone seemed fascinated, and i felt like nigel farage grumbling about the tofu-eating wokerati. there is nothing wrong with it, i swear, but how the fuck did we get here? that is all. how the fuck did we get here? do i have to choose between the subtypes of media in order to survive here? do i need to make media an identity, make media the lifeblood of relationships, make media the cornerstone of life itself? and if i do, is it really a choice between diary of a fucking ceo that too many people understand and the post colonial obscurity that no one understands at all? why is everything a spinning vortex of media and its extremes and its judgment and its evaluation, and why is it so never ending? i am spiralling, and it is not even the point. i have deleted all forms of media, and i love what it has done to me. but i suppose i can shut myself off from the media itself but not from people, who erroneously and inevitably act now as vessels of that media. everyone is always reacting to the same damn four things, and everyone is always reacting to something at all. if i must react to things, i hope it is miro and marina and someone who was loud, or dead. the more i am surrounded with real art, or dead people, the more alive i feel. the more i am surrounded by the dimwit nature of this society and its endless attachment, its endless suffering, its endless stupidity, the more i yearn to run away from it all. i don’t know why i don’t allow myself to live away instead of always running from it. i don’t know what has kept my one foot, now one toe, still dipped in the essence of the world i once occupied. i don’t know why i never let myself cut all of them off, and this is usually when i start lapping back and forth between shores. you see, the above tirade is completely and entirely useless, even if it is necessary, occasionally, for me to purge it all out. it is utterly symptomatic of the same behaviour, same way of seeing and being, as all i espouse. the only way to escape all of this is to transcend it entirely – to not make sense of it at all – to not be swallowed at all – to not look straight in its eye for too long. and to return, however begrudgingly, to the only peace i have ever found. which is the stillness of this moment and the stillness of my body and the stillness of this connection i have with something above me. with the live wire that runs vertically down my spine and extends straight from the centre of the earth to the sky above. i always imagine this lightning rod running inside the centre of my body, and it is the only calmness i find. it is an anchor and a rope and a way for me to survive. this connection to source, this intense now-ness, this life inside me, where there is no thinking, and where there is trust. but the problem is (as there always is), this is the only thing that still zaps me out of it. i don’t know if it is that i don’t know how to survive in the world and still access this energy, or that i am not letting myself admit i do know all i need to know. ouch. well. i do know the truth, and i do know what i want, and i do know what i need. to escape, and to stay escaped. but there is always a voice telling me i cannot, or should not, do that. it is not necessarily the obvious obligatory voice, but something more complex. like ethical – you must engage with the world – or psychological – you are acting out of fear. it is always these two voices in my head, telling me my response and desire and peace is somehow avoidant or incorrect or immoral or something or the fucking other. it is not even that i have not attempted to try living inside the world, and tolerating this nonsense. i have, for three damn years, and it has not gotten me anywhere. i need to hear the other side of the story –, some example of some hermit who did not die from the supposed harshness of self-preservation – or a sign from the universe to trust myself in this. i mean, the buddha is a good example, but i am always looking for a signier-sign. but i think i’m going to let myself entertain this now. i don’t know where the moralising is coming from and why it feels so intense and punishing. why i don’t allow myself to do this, when it is all i have ever found peace in. i am writing more too. i am feeling fucking fantastic. i’ll find a way to build a new world out of it, but i need to let myself have the clean slate. i think the shores are shrinking, and i am being squeezed in the middle. they don’t tell you when they tell you to absolve all attachment just how much time you should spend with your attachment. yes, i do not have it if i am firmly in the present, but how much do i engage with reminders that this attachment still exists? the buddha should give me a manual. you don’t expose yourself to enemies, right? so where the fuck do you draw the line? we need so much coddling – i need so much specificity – and this is symptomatic of the same disease that plagues steven bartlett. we need podcasts and information and all the knowledge in the world – to distance ourselves from what we already know. to know is to not know. i think i must stop here. because i must access a different way of knowing to get to the answer to all this. something that requires not digging, not solving, not figuring. i’ll let the answer come to me. soooo beee ittt. i am so fucking annoyed by this piece of writing, i feel heavy and unsatisfied and deeper in my hole, and that, in itself, is somewhere to begin. maybe it’s not even relevant - the answer. maybe it is just a distraction from the only thing i am being guided to pursue. maybe it is extraneous, and it does not matter. maybe i just need to anchor in the lightning rod first, and let all else fall away or follow. it is so miniscule and trivial, compared to the light that is here. if i let the darkness be a thief, let it be my failing, not theirs.